This is a really great suggestion. The graph below thus gives the self-reported hiring rate (the "reporting rate") for each of the schools listed in Leiter's chart. This is calculated by dividing the number of reported hires for a given school by the number of alumni from that school on the market this year based on the first two FAR distributions, as reported by Leiter.

For example, the SSRELHR (Spring Self-Reported Entry Level Hiring Report) shows that 21 reported hires received their JD from Harvard, and Leiter reports that Harvard had 54 alumni in the first two FAR distributions, so Harvard has a rate of 21/54, approximately 39%.

This is all subject to a lot of caveats, of course--here are three, and I'm sure I'm missing some. There are both numerator and denominator issues:

(1) Numerator: I don't know whether the apparently "unsuccessful" candidates weren't hired, or were hired but weren't reported to the SSRELHR.

(2) Numerator: Some schools tend to report their alumni to the SSRELHR very faithfully, so the reporting rate might well differ by school.

(3) Denominator: The "number of people on the market" is drawn from the first two FAR form distributions. There is a third, albeit smaller, distribution, and some people hired were not in the FAR pool at all.

The comments to the Tom Bell post are very interesting and helpful as well.

But all this information is old-ish (the Tom Bell graphs are five years old), and of course current information would be very helpful, if anyone has it.

Posted by: Sarah Lawsky | May 8, 2012 9:52:58 AM

I don't see how this is meaningful data. There's nothing that accounts for quality of the placement or the quality of the candidate. A candidate who lands a top-tier job reflects differently on a school than a candidate who ends up a marginal school (define that how you will). Likewise, there are candidates who have JDs from good schools, but they got them 30 years ago and haven't written a lick since. There are others who are just plain weird and with awful interview skills. It's not fair to hold them against the school.